nakki✳︎
a few ideas
floating around ⤴︎
i also like math a lot
Computer Science and Mathematics at UCL

NakshatrVelagapudi

I enjoy building apps, using AI for cool things, and applying maths in unique ways.
Let me know if you’d like to turn an idea into reality!

Take a look ↓
LONDON, UK ✳︎ MATHS & CS @ UCLSCROLL TO FIND OUT MORE ↓
UKMT SENIOR MATHS CHALLENGE — GOLD ✳︎ PERSE CODING CHALLENGE — TOP 5% NATIONALLY ✳︎ BEBRAS / RASPBERRY PI TRAILBLAZERS — DISTINCTION · TOP 100 OF 5,380+ ✳︎ BPHO COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS — GOLD ✳︎ A-LEVEL CS NEA — 70/70 ✳︎
A FEW THINGS I’VE BEEN WORKING ON

Stuff I’ve made.
And what I learned.

A mix of apps, hackathon projects, and ideas I wanted to try out.
Here’s how they turned out.

the project pile ↴︎
01 / THE BIG ONE OUT IN THE WORLD

Illustra

Your brain has enough tabs open.

So I built a study desk for it. Notes, materials, flashcards and AI that runs right on your computer. One app, built from the ground up.

On-device AIDesktop appLead developer
Meet Illustra ↗︎
IDEA →
SHIPPED.
● ● ●your very own study desk↗︎
Illustra desktop app showing notebooks, materials, flashcards and linked notes.
yes, this is the actual app ↑
KOTLIN / COMPOSE / LLAMA.CPP / SQLITEPlay with the web demo ↗︎
02 / THINKING A FEW MOVES AHEADADAPTING TO NEW CHALLENGES

3/465Optiver AI Chessathon

A chess engine with a need for speed.

465 teams from around the world entered. We topped the Swiss qualifiers, reached the 32-team London knockout, and finished third overall. Three builders, one CPU core, and about 900,000 nodes searched per second.

Python / NumbaPyTorch / NNUELLVM / AVX2
AI Chessathon ↗︎
£250TEAM PRIZE
one core and 2 GB of RAM to work with.
1ST IN SWISS QUALIFIERS · 3RD IN FINALS~40% FASTER WITH AVX2 ↗︎
03 / THREE DAYS, ONE IDEALEADING A TEAM

Cambridge
HackEdHackathon Winner

An AI platform that turns lessons into revision tools.

We built a web app that turns uploaded lesson content into notes, flashcards and practice questions using AI. I led our three-person team and co-developed the platform, bringing the Next.js frontend and Django backend together in three days.

Next.jsDjangoOpenRouter
Read the Dulwich article ↗︎
THE LEARNING LOOP

Lesson to revision.

↗︎ Notes✳︎ Flashcards? Questions
LESSON IN→IDEAS OUT
WE
WON! ✳︎
a little illustration of the idea
3 PEOPLE / 3 DAYS / ONE WORKING PLATFORMNEXT.JS FRONTEND / DJANGO BACKEND
04 / AI AGENT PAYMENTSDESIGNING SAFEGUARDS

Cantor8
Hackathon4th Place

A wallet that lets AI agents spend within limits you set.

Our five-person team built an AI-agent wallet with spending rules enforced by smart contracts. I implemented per-period and lifetime caps, predictable allowance resets, and controls to revoke an agent’s spending access. We won a £1,000 team prize.

PythonDamlSmart contracts
Big ideas.
Bounded budgets.
£1,000TEAM PRIZEconcept illustration · real safeguards
7 REFUSAL CASES TESTEDPER-PERIOD CAPS / LIFETIME CAPS / REVOCATION
SCHOOL PROJECTS, TAKEN FURTHER

A couple more
things I’ve built.

Some nice physics and a game

05 / MAKING SENSE OF LIGHTMATHS INTO MODELS

BPhOComputational PhysicsGold

Python simulations of how light bends, focuses and splits into colour.

I built models and interactive visualisations across twelve computational tasks, exploring lenses, prisms, refraction and rainbows. I used ray tracing and numerical methods to compare the physics with simulated and experimental data.

Python / NumPyMatplotlibTkinter
LIGHT LABMODEL SKETCH / 01
LIGHT INPRISMCOLOUR OUT
n₁ sin θ₁ = n₂ sin θ₂ follow the ray ↗︎
an illustration of the simulations
12 COMPUTATIONAL TASKSREFRACTION / LENSES / DISPERSION / RAINBOWS
06 / BUILDING EVERY MOVING PARTGAME DEVELOPMENT

A-Level CS NEA70/70

An eight-level platformer, built in Python and Pygame.

I built a modular game with movement physics, buffered controls, collision detection and saved personal bests. Its 2,000+ lines of code included a level system, asset caching and save files. By caching and reusing loaded assets, I cut level-loading time from 650 ms to 170 ms.

PythonPygameGame physics
THE JUMPING KNIGHTPYTHON / PYGAME
Knight platformer screenshot with an interactive portfolio hub overlay
PLAYER 010/3 GEMS
↗︎
LEVEL HUBMINI RUNS
LEVEL 01 SELECTED

← → to move · SPACE to jump
Collect 3 gems. Reach the portal.

TAKE A BREATHER.
NICELY DONE.Run complete!
SPACE TO JUMP · ESC FOR HUB

650 ms → 170 msLevel loading with asset caching
Reusing loaded assets instead of reloading them
2,000+ LINES / 8 LEVELSPHYSICS / COLLISIONS / LEVELS / SAVES
Nakshatr Velagapudi wearing glasses, a navy suit and a striped tie
More about me

Hi again.
I’m Nakki.↗︎

I’m studying Maths & Computer Science at UCL. I like the bit where an abstract idea becomes something you can actually click, play, or learn with.

Outside these projects, I lead technology at UCL Hedge Fund Society. I’ve also taught 20+ beginners how to build and evaluate models. Making things is fun. Helping someone else make their first thing is pretty great too.

See what’s on my GitHub ↗︎
GOT AN IDEA? A QUESTION?LONDON, UK ↗︎

Let’s make
something click.↗︎

Nakshatr’s Portfolio

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